Gotou Julia
JULIA COULDN’T QUITE DECIDE if it was sympathy, pity, or guilt.
“Was that when she stopped messaging you?”
“Yeah. I don’t have all the details, but I hear she’s going through a lot right now, so I wanted to give her space,” Ai nodded, as if there was nothing to worry about.
Her heart ached as she imagined the emotional reaction of a teenage girl she didn’t know. It must have felt so isolating—so invalidating.
“Look, you’re a nice guy, but…”
Even Julia wasn’t quite sure what sentiment was threatening to spill from her lips. But she could tell it wasn’t her place to say something, particularly to someone she hadn’t seen in years, so she held it back. Still, her compassion for the teenager weighed heavily.
The girl was probably just invested in her own narrative. Believing that she was part of a story, that she would one day change, was likely what kept her together. Julia would know, after all—she had been there herself.
“But?”
“…You need to work on your tact.”
“Yeah, I definitely do.”
“What’s she up to these days?”
“Dunno. Like I said, we haven’t talked much. Maybe it was something I said.”
Ai hadn’t changed a bit; he still wore his worries openly. While she envied his ability to approach his friendships with such sincerity, it could be incredibly cruel.
“Okay, this is just my personal interpretation, so I want you to treat it the same as her ‘Ai is a guy’ theory.”
“Sure thing.”
Then, after a moment of consideration, Julia chose not to choose her words.
“That girl probably wasn’t serious about being friends with you.”
Even his look of shock was Ai through and through. “I wouldn’t go that far!”
“The way I see it, she is on some level a two-faced person who thinks about how to manipulate people and doesn’t know how to forge real relationships. To what degree, I couldn’t say. But she recognizes this about herself and wants to change, so she desperately self-inserts into someone who managed to break free: the main character of Girl’s March. If I’m right about this, then it’s a struggle only she understands, and it doesn’t help her to have other people say she’s wrong.”
She was talking about a stranger, but she could almost trick herself into thinking she was describing herself.
“Wow…I never considered that…”
Even when his behavior was criticized by someone who wasn’t there to see it, Ai could accept her opinion as reasonable without getting upset. He’d lived his whole life embracing this as a valid facet of his personality. Confronted with it for the first time in a long while, Julia was dying to reach out to the mystery girl and say:
How in the world is he so transparent, unlike you or me? How does one go through life without ever doubting or hating themselves? I suspect that’s exactly what people like us have always yearned for.
“If I ever meet her, I’ll have to apologize on your behalf.”
“…Actually, I’m kinda worried about her.”
Assuming Julia’s theory was right, it was hard to say whether the girl would be capable of bouncing back.
“See, I heard she broke up with her boyfriend.”
“She told you that?”
“No, I ran into a friend of hers the other day. Come to think of it, he mentioned something else… What was it again…?”
His contemplative expression was among her favorites. It afforded her a sense of terror and thrill, like he was about to make the first fold on a crisp sheet of origami paper.
“Ah, now I remember. He said she’s been acting out, arguing with a teacher, skipping out on work, and…what was the rest? Right, she stopped wearing her glasses… Oh, and she randomly started talking to the biggest loser in class, or something? He said ‘I don’t know what inspired her.’ And I agree, her behavior does sound a—”
“Wait.”
How long had it been since she last interrupted someone who was speaking? Julia couldn’t even remember.
“What?”
Prior to becoming a pop star, back when she could interact with people as her genuine self without constantly thinking about PR spin, she was always the type to let him or her other friends finish their sentences. What compelled her to go against her own nature was a prick of dread so deeply chilling, she knew it couldn’t wait.
“That’s not good.” In her panic, her first words were a statement of fact that needed no agreement. By the next set, her brain had finally caught up with her mouth. “She might still be reenacting Girl’s March all by herself.”
Ai reacted with unvarnished confusion, likely a perfect match to the emotion he felt on the inside. “I thought maybe that was the case, but like with the fight I mentioned earlier, there’s no scene that corresponds to it.”
“No, there might be.”
In the process of writing those lyrics, Julia had read the source material over and over. Now, she recalled the story as images in her mind’s eye.
“The way I pictured it, what The Girl stops wearing are barrettes on her bangs, the person she argues with is a middle-aged neighbor lady who she asks for directions, the ‘work’ she skips is a daily household chore she does for her family, and the person she randomly talks to is her male childhood friend. But this girl might have interpreted it differently.”
“I think your interpretation is pretty close to mine.”
“Do you remember the part near the end where The Girl starts seeking out more and more changes?”
“That’s right before the climax, isn’t it?”
“That’s not good!”
Overwhelmed by the urgency in her voice, Ai started to take a drag of a cigarette, only to quickly realize he wasn’t holding one. “You think she’s gonna go all the way?”
“Yes!”
“That’s ridiculous.”
“The only reason the protagonist survives at the end of Girl’s March is because Ai’s with her! You need to go find that girl, now. She could be right here in town today. The book describes the setting as ‘a district where people gather,’ and the day as ‘a day where everyone prays for dignity for all mankind, if only to keep up appearances,’ and today—”
“Listen to me, Julia.”
This time it was his turn to interrupt. This was unusual for him too, unless the years apart had changed his conversational rhythm. From his slow cadence, she could tell he was trying to soothe her panic, so she took a deep breath. Alas, it didn’t work, and her shoulders quavered. What if something was about to happen to the girl?
“I’m gonna be brutally honest about how I feel right now.”
When are you not? she wondered silently.
“This is just some stupid book we’re talking about.”
She nodded. “True.”
“I mean, maybe I shouldn’t have said stupid. My point is, it’s not real life, and no amount of imitation can change that.”
“But your friend has been living her whole life that way, correct?”
“Yeah.”
Gazing into her eyes, Ai took a long, deep breath, then exhaled. She suspected he was debating whether it was safe to speak his mind. But she knew it went against his code of ethics to keep that sort of thing hidden.
“That changes nothing.” As always, Ai was honest to a fault: “Attempting suicide to pretend you’re the protagonist has gotta be the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard.”
Her ears picked up every last word. She sensed in him both discomfort at the prospect of a friend’s death and the courage to take accountability for his statement.
“It’s fiction. It’s made-up! You wanna use it as moral support, knock yourself out, but the second you let it consume your life, something’s wrong with you!”
Indeed, it wasn’t healthy. But while she shared his view, she felt a bit differently.
“I agree, but to be clear, we don’t know what her life is like.” It was a question Julia herself had continued to wrestle with, even after falling into the abyss. She wasn’t sure what her own life was, let alone the life of some high schooler she’d never met. “So we can’t say for sure that she’s wrong.”
That was why people did their best to imagine. And Julia was no exception to this.
What did the girl see when she was cornered, standing on the edge of a cliff?
Perhaps it was something like this.
Standing in the middle of a chilly street, she should have been able to feel the bite of the wintry wind, the joy of moments spent with local friends and comrades, the taste of the food in front of her—and yet everything outside her storyline rang hollow. But Ai was right: her body was here in the real world, and this fact could never be reconciled with her narrative, and the public would only make a record of that which they could observe, and over time those little records became like a second skin, and one would think that tearing it away would reveal her pure essence, but at its root was a human heart with its own values, and since it didn’t seem fit to show the public, she did everything she could to hide its shape—
Once again, though she was supposed to be thinking about the other girl, Julia had at some point started to picture herself as she was preparing to call Ai last night. Where exactly was she standing in that moment? Was it the realm of the real Gotou Julia or the one from the storyline? She was as clueless about her own truth as she was about the girl’s.
If she kept mulling it over, would she eventually find the answer? Would her train of thought go down the right path? What if there was no answer, but instead an endless fog of ambiguity, and everyone was allowed to describe where they stood however they saw fit? It would be both true and a falsehood, real and fake, inner self and outer persona…
“Ai.”
Just then, she looked down at her palm. It was the strangest sensation—like the world had just come into focus for the first time in years, and not because she was finally wearing her glasses. She contemplated its significance, curled her fingers as if to hold on tight, and looked once more into Ai’s eyes.
“I want you to go to her.”
“Julia…”
“Please.”
Defeated, he pulled his smartphone from his pocket. Each movement was graceful, but didn’t strike her as godly, the way it used to. Instead, it had become endearing. And she knew this emotion she felt would only make the choice ahead all the more painful.
“If you insist, I’ll try to get in touch with her. What’s your plan?”
“I…” Julia hesitated. If he asked her to join the search, believe it or not, she might have casually tagged along.
But that was when she heard a voice.